Safeway Sold on Solar
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 09.19.07
Photo credit: axis
North America's second-largest supermarket chain has embraced the power of the sun by installing a solar-panel array atop a newly renovated Safeway Lifestyle store in Dublin, California.
The solar equipment will generate approximately 7,500 megawatt hours of electricity per year—enough to provide 20 percent of the 55,000-square-foot retail facility's average power usage and up to 48 percent of its power during peak daylight hours. The store's on-site retail fuel station is already powered by wind energy.
Safeway says it plans to extend the program to nearly two dozen stores as part of a "broader renewable energy initiative."
By using solar energy at the Dublin store, the retailer says it is removing 487,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air, or the equivalent of taking 50 passenger cars off the road annually. The entire 23-store solar program, it says, will remove 10.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which will be equal to taking 1,000 cars off the road per year.
"Safeway is taking its green power initiative to the next level as we identify additional California store locations for its solar stores program," says Joe Pettus, Safeway's senior vice president, Fuel & Energy, in a press release. "The investment in renewable energy, both solar and wind makes sense for both the environment and our company."
In 2005, the company transitioned all of its 295 U.S. fuel stations to 100 percent renewable wind energy, making Safeway the largest retail purchaser of green wind energy in California, according the the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. CSRwire.com
See also: ::Safeway Switching Truck Fleet to Biodiesel in Arizona and ::Safeway Agrees to Remove Carbon Monoxide Treated Meat
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I'd like to see supermarkets do a lot more than install solar panels. Supermarkets use huge amounts of energy, much of it wasted.
Huge amounts of energy are wasted through friedges and freezers without doors. Supermarkets don't like them because customers are 'inconvenienced' when they have to open the door, which might result in them making fewer impulse buys.
Lighting is another area where energy is wasted, particularly if supermarkets use halogen globes in areas such as the fruit and vegetable section.
Rather than supermarkets installing PVs to offset 20% of their huge energy consumption rates, I'd like to see stringent regulations setting limits for maximum consumption rates per sqauare foot/sqaure metre. The requlations would require maximum energy consumption before any offsets from PV or other alternative means of generation were considered. Any offsets from PVs or otherwise would then be an extra bonus. Over time, the maximum energy requirements could be made more and more stringent.
On another note, I wonder whether they took embodied energy into account when they calculated how much carbon wuld be saved.
Hi,
Not to be picky, but are you sure you guys did not slip a decimal point somewhere?
If 7,500 megawatt -hours is 20% of the consumption of one store, then the full consumption of one store would
37.5 million KWH per year.
That would be the equivalent of nearly 4000 homes -- it seems hard to believe to believe that even a big grocery store could waste that much power?
I'd 2nd the first comment on conservation and efficiency -- it may not make as cool a story, but its certainly going to pay off much, much, much better.
Gary